The Vineyard Sisters: A Wayfarer Inn Novel

by Grace Palmer

  “Don’t you get it? Your money doesn’t matter to me, Tony. It isn’t about that anymore. It’s about you.” She shook her head. “We haven’t loved each other in a long time. That should have been enough reason for me to leave even before you were charged. But now… now I know what a liar and manipulator you are. And no amount of money is worth that.”

  Tony’s face went red. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to find the words, but Michelle didn’t want to wait for him to find them. He couldn’t say anything to change her mind.

  She turned around, opened the door, and closed it without looking back.

  Closing Time At Vineyard Books

  Michelle made it to the front door of Vineyard Books just as the owner was sliding the key into the lock.

  The man was older with a hunched back and glasses thick enough to be bulletproof. When he saw Michelle standing forlorn on the sidewalk, he opened the door a tiny crack. “We open tomorrow at ten.”

  “I know,” she grimaced. “Is there another bookstore around here? I know that’s a weird question to ask you. But, well… it’s sort of an emergency.”

  “A book emergency? In all my years of running this shop, I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  Michelle doubted this man was going to be swayed by any romantic tale, but she was out of options and desperate. “I ran into a handsome man a couple weeks back. I spilled coffee all over him and ruined his copy of Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s by…”

  “Yes, I’m familiar,” the man interrupted. He waved for Michelle to get to the point.

  She took a deep breath and tried to spit it all out as fast as possible. “I’ve run into him a few times since then, and as it turns out, I like him. Quite a lot. And since I’ve never been great with words, I thought it would be best to let Mr. Vonnegut do the talking for me.”

  The owner frowned. “It’s not a very romantic book.”

  “No, I just mean… I want to bring him a new copy. Tonight. As a way of showing him I’m interested.” Michelle’s face burned with embarrassment. She was too old for this kind of thing. “It’s silly, I know. It’s just that… he’s a writer, and I’m a writer, too. Sort of. So maybe another writer can, y’know, bring us together. That was the general idea, anyway, but now that I’m saying it out loud, it all sounds kinda…”

  The old man tipped his head to the side. Michelle felt about two inches tall.

  She blushed hard. “Forget it. It’s ridiculous and you’re closed, so I’ll just—”

  Suddenly, the man threw the door wide. “Are you looking for a paperback declaration of love or a special edition hardback declaration of love?”

  “Love” seemed like an incredibly lofty word given how long she’d known Isaac. But if it got her through the door, Michelle wouldn’t correct him.

  “Better make it a special edition hardback,” she said as she slipped through the door with a smile.

  The owner went and fetched a copy from the shelf, then rang Michelle up at the front register.

  “Thank you so much,” she said as she handed him the last of her cash. “This means a lot to me.”

  “Well, to be honest, I didn’t do it for you. When I was a much younger man, I met the most beautiful woman in the world in a bookstore.” His mustache twitched as he reminisced somberly. “Now, she’s waiting at home for me, and if I showed up and told her that I turned you away because it was closing time, she’d never forgive me.”

  He dropped the book in a white paper bag and slid in two Vineyard Books bookmarks.

  Michelle grabbed it and gave him her most genuine smile. “Well, still—thank you. And when you get home, tell that beautiful lady I said thank you, too.”

  At that, the man finally smiled. Michelle rushed out of the store and back to her car.

  Isaac’s description of his house wasn’t much to go on, but Michelle knew it was within a two-block radius of The Vineyard Gazette offices and had blue shutters. So, driving slowly down residential streets and squinting into the darkness, she parked in front of what she hoped was the right place.

  The wooden gate at the end of the walk squealed like it was being murdered when Michelle pushed it open. A second later, the porch light came on.

  She didn’t even get the chance to knock before the door opened…

  And there he was.

  Isaac was standing in the doorway in a pair of gray sweatpants and a t-shirt. He smiled, confused but not upset. “Michelle?”

  She wordlessly held out the paper bag. For some reason, her tongue had stopped working.

  Isaac narrowed his eyes and took it from her, unwrapping it painfully slowly. Finally, he slid the book free and turned it over, reading the spine.

  “Slaughterhouse-Five.” He shook his head. “I told you I didn’t need a new copy. You already gave me your screenplay.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought I’d make sure to give you something that would actually be enjoyable to read.” Michelle rolled back on her heels.

  She didn’t have a plan for what happened next. She’d gotten as far as buying and delivering the book. And then… nothing.

  Is this the part where she turned and left and felt like a fool for the rest of her days?

  “Well,” she mumbled, “anyway, I just thought I’d bring you that. Since, you know… the coffee thing. And so I guess I’ll just—”

  “Come inside?” Isaac asked. He stepped back into the house, making room for her to walk by.

  The fluttering in her stomach was back. But this time, Michelle didn’t have an excuse for what could be causing it. There was only one plausible answer.

  “Sure,” she said with a shy grin. “I could come in for a minute.”

  30

  Jill

  Evening At The Wayfarer Inn

  Jill served her mom dinner on the back porch.

  The wooden deck looked out over a modest yard that was mostly budding vegetable gardens and a few overgrown paving stones. It wasn’t an ocean view by any means, but it was private.

  And privacy was precisely what Jill wanted.

  “The chicken is spicy,” Amelia said, smacking her lips. “I like it.”

  “Mhmm.” Jill leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes.

  She only used salt and pepper to season the chicken, so God only knew where the spice was coming from. Once upon a time—when the future seemed rosy and the inn would be saved and the sun was shining and birds were chirping—Leslie had promised to give Jill cooking lessons.

  But that was before. Now that they were short on money for the inn, Jill assumed all their previous plans would be out the window. Jill would be busy working… somewhere. And where she would live was a whole other question she wasn’t ready to answer.

  Better to sit and try to enjoy the quiet.

  “Who made this?” her mom asked for the third time.

  “I did.”

  “In someone else’s kitchen?” She looked around like she might find answers somewhere else. “Seems like whoever lives here should be cooking for us, not you, Jilly Bean.”

  Jill sighed. “Yeah. Strange.”

  Her mom deserved more of an answer. Even if she’d forget it in five minutes. But Jill didn’t have the energy to talk.

  For a few minutes, her mom ate quietly. The only sound was the wind whipping through the trees and the scrape of her fork against the ceramic plate.

  Then Amelia turned back to the door with another frown. “Where are those two nice girls who run the place?”

  Jill opened her eyes. “Leslie and Michelle, you mean?”

  “Are those their names? Nice girls.”

  “They are,” Jill agreed, trying not to be too eager. “Do you know where we are?”

  This could be another lucid moment for her mom. A parting of her mental clouds to let in a little sunshine. Funny that it should happen on a day Jill felt so stormy.

  Amelia looked around the back garden and her mouth tipped into a small smile. “The back porch.”


  Jill didn’t like to quiz her mom. It wasn’t fair when the deck was so clearly stacked against her. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from prodding. “The back porch of…?”

  Amelia ignored the question. “You know, this yard was full of poison ivy when I lived here. Stalks of it nearly to my hip.”

  A smile broke across Jill’s face. “Oh, really? How did you get rid of it?”

  “Waders,” she laughed. “I wore of pair of Warren’s old waders and protective gloves and every long sleeve shirt I owned. I looked like a snowman in all those layers! But we got it down. We sprayed the stalks down and ripped them up by the roots. It was warfare.”

  “Did you plant the gardens, too?”

  Amelia’s eyes refocused as the memory slipped away. She shook her head. “No, that must have been after I left. You know how I am with gardening.”

  “‘A black thumb’ is how I remember you describing it.”

  “Exactly. I swear even produce from the store rots faster when I buy it.”

  When Jill was small, she’d sit in the large basket of the shopping card and her mom would hand her the groceries. Jill would organize them into neat piles and towers around her, forming an edible city. Grayson would be off sprinting up and down the aisles, terrorizing the other shoppers. So for that moment, it was just Jill and her mom. The only two Ruthers women.

  They hadn’t been to a grocery store together in years. Jill did all of the shopping for both of them now, all by herself. But those were still sweet memories.

  Her mom sat down her fork and leaned back in her chair. “I always worried I wasn’t maternal enough to be a mom. Even before I had kids, I’d never been good at taking care of anyone—least of all myself. And then, suddenly, I had two babies.”

  “On your own.” Jill shook her head. She couldn’t imagine.

  “Two babies on my own,” Amelia repeated, nodding. “I thought about coming back when I found out. At first.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I’d made a real show of leaving,” she sighed mournfully. “It was quite the dramatic exit. Me carting everything I could carry out to the cab. Warren glaring at me from the porch. He was certain I’d change my mind and come back.”

  “He didn’t think you’d really leave?” Jill asked.

  “Of course not! I had nowhere to go. Almost no money to my name. I walked away with nothing, so he didn’t think I’d get very far. I wanted to prove him wrong. I just didn’t want to be weak, Jill. I’ve been so many things in my life. But never weak.”

  Some people would look at Jill’s childhood, at Amelia’s life, and think she hadn’t made it very far. Living in apartments, wearing nothing but thrifted clothes, counting pennies from the change drawer to pay off bills each month. But Jill saw the other side of it. The pride her mom found in keeping a clean apartment. In providing for her kids. In raising respectful humans.

  In Jill’s estimate, her mom had made it in all the ways that counted.

  Suddenly, Amelia snapped her fingers and pointed at Jill. “And that is why I always told you a woman needs to be prepared. Starting that day, I put aside every spare penny and dollar I ever had into my own rainy day fund. So my decisions would never be dictated by desperation.”

  “It was good advice.” As soon as she’d moved out of her mom’s house, Jill had started her own rainy day fund. A wad of cash she kept hidden behind a few books on a shelf and added to whenever she could spare it. Of course, she’d had her share of rainy days.

  Rusted-out rotors on her car. A fried motherboard in her laptop. An emergency dental surgery.

  Just an endless parade of big and little things stealing a dollar here and a dollar there, until Jill was left without any safety net to speak of.

  “I know darn well it was good advice, dear,” her mom said firmly. She reached into the inside pocket of her wind breaker and pulled out a thick, yellowed envelope. “But now, I’m too old for such a thing. I mean, where am I going, really?”

  Jill frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Look at me. I’m old, Jilly. Settled. The next rainy day I have will likely be the storm that takes me out to sea.”

  “Hush, Mom, don’t talk like that.”

  “Well, no sense in being obtuse about it. It’s true.” She slapped the envelope against her other palm with a heavy thwack. “There’s no sense in being gentle, either. I’ll be dead soon and this would do you more good than me. So go on then. Take it.”

  She held out the envelope. Jill stared at it.

  Her mom seemed to be having a lucid moment, but did she really know what she was doing? Did she understand the implications?

  Jill waved the envelope away. “Mom, keep your money. If you want to be morbid, I’ll use it to buy your casket.”

  “Who needs a casket? Just throw me in the ground and cover me with dirt.” She laughed and once again shoved the envelope towards her daughter. “Take it. That’s an order.”

  For a second, she sounded so much like her old self. Like the mom Jill remembered growing up. Firm and bossy and uncomfortably earnest.

  In the end, that’s what made Jill agree to take the envelope. If this was her mom’s last good moment, Jill wanted to play along. She wanted to stay in it as long as she could.

  “I don’t need your money,” Jill lied. The envelope felt heavier than she’d expected, and she lifted the flap. “I’d rather you kept it and—”

  Her words died on her lips. The stack of bills was as thick as a dictionary.

  Jill’s eyes widened. Her gaze locked onto the wad of cash in her hands. She didn’t even need to count it to know it was more money than she’d ever held at once.

  “Mom,” she breathed. “This is…”

  “About fifteen thousand dollars, I think. Give or take.”

  Fifteen thousand dollars.

  The money resting in Jill’s palm was enough to solve all of their problems. Hers, Leslie’s, Michelle’s. Even her mom’s! They could pay off the debt and then Jill could start getting a paycheck. They could make a life here.

  A real, honest-to-goodness fresh start.

  When Jill looked up, her mom was smiling at her. “I’ve always wanted to do something like this for you. I know I wasn’t always able to give you what you wanted growing up, but—”

  “You always gave me what I needed, Mom.” Jill leaned over and wrapped her arms around her mom’s neck. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. “You gave me what was important.”

  Amelia patted her shoulder. “That may be. But this is nice, too, right?”

  Jill sat back in her chair and shook her head, speechless. “It’s so nice, Mom. Too nice. I just… I don’t know if I can—”

  “Of course you can,” her mom dismissed. “You take it and you enjoy it. Every rainy day ends in a rainbow. Let this be your rainbow.”

  “It’s more like my pot of gold,” Jill laughed. She blinked back more tears. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Thank you” hardly seemed like enough, but it was all Jill could think to say. Her throat felt thick.

  Her mom reached over and patted her knee. “My pleasure, Jilly.”

  Grayson picked up on the second ring. Surprisingly fast for him. “Have you decided?”

  “Hello to you, too,” Jill said.

  Her voice came out calm and even, but she was pacing across the kitchen floor like a nervous bull. She kept looking down, expecting to see grooves wearing in the old hardwood floors.

  “Hello,” he said, voice thick with sarcasm. “How have you been? How’s the family? Have you decided?”

  “You know, most people ask those questions sincerely. It’s called ‘having a normal conversation.’ Maybe one day, you and I can try it.”

  “Today is not that day. Are you all going to make the smart decision and sell? The offer is incredibly generous and I can’t promise it will remain that way if you stall.”

  Jill rolled her shoulders and took a breath. She didn’t need to talk to Michelle and Leslie f
irst to know what they would want to do. “We’ve made a decision.”

  There was a beat of silence. “Okay, and…?”

  “We have the money to pay the debt. So we’re going to do that. Then, eventually, we’ll pay you for your shares.”

  The previous beat of silence morphed into a symphony of it. Grayson didn’t say anything for a long time. But Jill could tell he was still there. She could hear him breathing into the phone.

  “We’ll work with you to find a price you think is fair,” she continued. “I’m not sure exactly when we’ll be able to afford it, but—”

  He snorted, interrupting her. “You won’t be able to. Because debt or no debt, that inn is a money pit. It’s worthless.”

  “You’ve never even seen it.”

  “And I don’t need to,” he said. “Our so-called dad spent his worthless life there, ignoring us and pretending we didn’t exist. I don’t need to vacation there to know it’s not worth my time.”

  “This has nothing to do with him.”

  He barked out a laugh. “You’re in such deep denial. Siding with them.” He spit the word like poison. “After all this time, you’re still just the same lost little girl looking for her daddy. It’s time to grow up, Jill. Time to make big girl decisions.”

  Jill’s bottom lip quivered. She pinched it between her teeth. She wasn’t going to yell at her brother. She wasn’t going to cry. This conversation was going to be civil.

  “I’m not siding with anyone except myself,” Jill said evenly. “I like it here. I’m happier here. And Mom is doing better than ever. She loves the ocean and seems more fulfilled. I just… I think this is the right place for us.”

  “Well, that’s great,” he bit out. “I’m so completely and utterly thrilled for you. But if you think my shares are going to come cheap, you and your sisters have got another thing coming.”

  “They’re your sisters, too. You might actually like them if you bothered to give them a chance.”

  Grayson continued as though Jill hadn’t spoken. “You may think you can ferry off to this island and live out your perfect family fantasy with these women, but I’m not going anywhere. I own twenty-five percent of the Wayfinder Inn—”